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Title: A Simple idea Author: Glenn Wallis Date: 2020 Language: en Topics: Anarchism, theory Source: Chapter from *An Anarchist’s Manifesto*. Warbler Press.
At the very root of anarchy is a simple idea: social organization
without (an) a dominating figure or controller (archos). Though simple,
realizing such a form in our daily lives is virtually impossible. Though
virtually impossible, this idea, when pursued, is profoundly
constructive. The mere removal of authority has real-world consequences
that are in equal measure transformative and far-reaching, for both the
individuals involved and society as a whole. That removal catalyzes an
array of additional values and ways of being. I was exposed to anarchist
principles in action when I attended a “free” school as a teenager.
Although we did not always explicitly use the parlance of anarchist
theory, my mere participation in the school exposed me, in the deepest
epidemiological sense of that word, to the practices, the ways of being,
that we will be exploring in this text. Once I experienced the
creativity and intelligence that are unleashed through, say, mutual
cooperation, I could never again value or respect top-down authority.
Because of my experience, I have been perplexed that anarchism has
remained so marginalized for so long. Indeed, as I learned back then,
many exceptionally thoughtful and creative people who are not generally
known as anarchists, or indeed who do not even identify as anarchist,
have in fact argued that for humanity to have a future, or at least a
future worth living, something like anarchism must become the norm. Why
would they think so? More importantly, why might you come to think so?
In terms of a definition, this is what I have come to understand by this
simple idea.
Anarchism: A value system for organizing relations between people. It
emphasizes order, cooperation, equality, and mutual support. It rejects
authoritarianism, oppression, exploitation, coercion, and hierarchy.
Anarchist: A person who applies and advances the values of anarchism
within micro, meso, or macro levels of interaction; that is, from
partnerships and small groups to organizations, institutions, and
large-scale political formations.
Anarchism is nothing if not, in the parlance of the left, a praxis.
Basically, this is a German word for “practice.” However, it is useful
for articulating a specific understanding of both the role of, and the
relationship between, theory and practice in shaping our world. And it
is very important for understanding the nature of anarchism. In its
socialist sense, the concept praxis originates in Marx’s Theses on
Feuerbach. These were notes that Marx jotted down as an exile in
Brussels in 1845 as he was turning away from abstract idealist notions
of being in the world, and toward a deeply embodied materialism. What
this means exactly should become clear as we proceed. The gist of the
idea is discernible from the first Thesis: “The chief defect of all
hitherto existing materialism … is that the thing, reality,
sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object of
contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, practice [German:
Praxis], not subjectively.” Marx is positing that sensuous human
activity is already present within the very process of “contemplation,”
or indeed, in the very creation of the object or idea under
consideration. The Theses want to place the primacy of praxis – our
lived engagement with, and influence on, our social world – over
abstraction, or mere “scholastic” approaches to the person in the world
that circumvent this engagement.
People must prove the truth – i.e. the reality and power, the
this-sidedness of their thinking, in practice. The dispute over the
reality or non-reality of thinking that is isolated from practice is a
purely scholastic question … All social life is essentially practical.
All mysteries which lead theory to mysticism find their rational
solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice …
The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the
point is to change it. (Karl Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, 1, 2, 8, 11.)
Praxis thus has two facets. The first facet involves committed action in
and on our social formations, and does so, moreover, on the premise that
those formations already and continuously bear our shaping influence.
Existing social formations are viewed not as natural and inevitable
outcomes, but rather as the current result of certain complex processes,
primarily historical, cultural, political, and economic in nature. The
second facet assumes that theorizing different social formations is
intertwined in the practical facet. Anarchist bestselling author, Ursula
Le Guin (1929–2018), brought this facet to life in her National Book
Award speech, in which she said: “We live in capitalism, its power seems
inescapable – but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human
power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change
often begin in art.” When Marx made his famous proclamation about the
philosophers in the last of the Theses, he was not asking us to forego
theoretical speculation, or, indeed, art. Rather, he assumed the value
and promise held out by such work. It is, however, never enough. Praxis
is a useful term because it combines two interpenetrated modes of
practical action that we typically hold apart: theory and practice. In
short, then, praxis names the simultaneous and symbiotic relationship
between theoretically-informed practical action and practice-informed
theorization. It means: theory in action; action in theorizing. As
Marquis Bey puts it, since:
praxis is a doing, an agential enactment that bears on sociality, then a
critical praxis marks an interrogative social enactment. What kind of
politics might this lead to? What kind of world might this engender, and
who might show up to this promiscuous gathering? (Marquis Bey,
Anarcho-Blackness: Notes Toward a Black Anarchism [Chico: AK Press,
2020], 38–39.)
So, again, anarchism is based on a simple proposition. Its ideal is
virtually impossible to realize because of the many powerful forces that
lead to and perpetuate the status quo, the current state of affairs
(indistinguishable from the affairs of the state). Anarchist praxis is
nonetheless profoundly constructive because in acting on the world with
its values, we give shape, to whatever extent, to a new world. It is
important to keep this point in mind. For one thing, it puts the lie to
the common reputation of anarchism as a starry-eyed utopianism. As a
praxis, anarchism is nothing if not a committed and often impassioned
experimentation, in thought and action, concerning better ways of living
together. More importantly, this point puts the onus on everyone who
sees the value here to actualize, to whatever extent they are able, the
forms of organization they want to see manifest in the world. Anarchism,
that is to say, is a set of ideas with which to do something. Even more
to the point, anarchism is something that is done. As Albert Meltzer
(1920–1996) insists, anarchism is “a creed that has been worked out in
practice rather than from a philosophy.”
Before we move on, we should further consider this notion of extent.
This is actually a somewhat vexed issue in anarchist discourse. A brief
discussion here should help you in imagining how you might employ
anarchist ideas.
For anarchism to be realized, must it occur at the macro level of what
we call nations and states? Much anarchist thought seems to assume so.
This strand of thought often reads like political science, offering a
theory of the (stateless) state on a grand scale. It concerns itself
with uppercase Society. Errico Malatesta’s (1853–1932) “The Anarchist
Revolution” is pervaded by this spirit of total revolution.
The revolution is the creation of new living institutions, new
groupings, new social relationships; it is the destruction of privileges
and monopolies. Revolution is the organization of all public services by
those who work in them in their own interest as well as the public’s.
Revolution is the forming and disbanding of thousands of representative,
district, communal, regional, national bodies … Anarchy cannot be
achieved until after the revolution, which will sweep away the first
material obstacles. (Errico Malatesta, “The Anarchist Revolution,” The
Anarchist Library)
Macro-scale anarchism often includes detailed descriptions of how things
will look “under anarchism.” It is this proclivity to think through
eminently practical matters like money, organization and governance,
work and industry, transportation, technology, and so on ad infinitum,
that contributes to anarchism’s reputation as a dreamy utopianism. And
yet, is it not reasonable to conclude that until we replace the
demonstrably unjust systems of organization that make up our world
nothing of consequence will ever change? Some anarchists see that as an
unreasonable assertion. Even the fiery Malatesta ends his call to total
revolution with these words: “If we are unable to overthrow capitalism,
we shall have to demand for ourselves and for all who want it, the right
of free access to the necessary means of production to maintain an
independent existence.” Does “The Anarchist Revolution” end with a
submissive flinch?
So, maybe it is enough to realize anarchist ideals at the micro level of
personal relations and lowercase society. Socialist historian Howard
Zinn cautioned against the “grand, heroic actions” that many anarchists
associate with macro revolutionary social praxis.
Revolutionary change does not come as one cataclysmic moment … but as an
endless succession of surprises, moving zigzag toward a more perfect
society. We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate
in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of
people, can transform the world. (Quoted in Cindy Milstein, Anarchism
and its Aspirations, [Chico: AK Press, 2010] 65)
If we take a sober assessment of the inconceivably gargantuan
mobilization of people, power, and material resources required to
achieve anything resembling a “revolution,” do we not arrive at a
similar conclusion? Even a dyed-in-the-wool communist like Slavoj Žižek
(or was it Marxist theorist Fredric Jameson?) can proclaim, “it is
easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism.” Many
leftist thinkers today, in fact, express a similar resignation toward
what they view as the vampiric, zombie-like capacities of capitalism,
and all of the accompanying political, cultural, and economic modes of
life encapsulated in that term. Adapting a term used by German pop
artists in the 1960s to parody socialist realism, Mark Fisher names this
phenomenon “capitalist realism.” This is “the widespread sense that not
only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system, but
also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to
it.” The reason for our failure of imagination is that capitalism
appears so fundamentally necessary, natural, and inevitable that we lose
sight of the fact that it is, like Ursula Le Guin’s divine right of
kings, a wholly contingent affair. It is, says Fisher,
more like a pervasive atmosphere, conditioning not only the production
of culture but also the regulation of work and education, and acting as
a kind of invisible barrier constraining thought and action. (Mark
Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? [Winchester: Zero
Books, 2009], 2)
Like the Golem of medieval Jewish lore, capitalism is a deaf and dumb
beast fashioned from the dust – created by humans – that eventually
comes to terrorize its mesmerized makers. Rabbi Zeira was acting as an
insurgent anarchist when he confronted the Golem, bellowing, “You were
created by the sages; return to your dust!”
But, of course, in real life, the Golem does not return to its dust at
our command. If anything, the massive structures of oppression that
macro-oriented anarchists intend to destroy only harden over time. In
fact, as a recent Monmouth University poll on Americans’ views on
socialism vs. capitalism indicate, those ostensibly oppressive
structures resolutely retain their popularity over time. So, to some
anarchists, Zinn’s “small acts” strategy amounts to a resignation or
surrender. Some have rendered even harsher judgements. Murray Bookchin
(1921–2006) derisively called this phenomenon “lifestyle anarchism.” He
contends that anarchists have failed in their efforts at macro change
largely because “thousands of self-styled anarchists have slowly
surrendered the social core of anarchist ideas to the all-pervasive
Yuppie and New Age personalism that marks this decadent, bourgeoisified
era.” And by “personalism,” Bookchin means the individual-preference
motivated “small acts” of Zinn’s statement. To other anarchists, the
“small acts” argument amounts to magical thinking. What guarantee is
there that anyone, much less “millions of people,” will join my efforts?
And even if they do, history predicts that the state would eventually
intervene to quash it, and capitalism would find a way to co-opt,
commodify, and depotentialize it. Hence, argue the macroists, the
necessity for total revolution, which, by definition, dismantles the
overarching oppressive infrastructure – the state and capitalism –
itself. To which the chorus solemnly intones: That is just not possible.
And around and around we go.
Finally, the “extent” of application for anarchist principles might
occur at the meso level of social organization. I understand the two
complementary principles of prefiguration and concrete utopia to be
models for this meso level anarchism. These ideas are encapsulated in
the motto of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the
revolutionary international labor union known as the Wobblies: “building
the new society in the shell of the old.” Urban planner, architect, and
eminently practical anarchist theorist, Colin Ward (1924–2010), echoes
this contention in his often-cited insistence that “If you want to build
a free society, the parts are all at hand.” Traditionally, this approach
calls for praxis within the existing institutions of our social life,
such as schools, neighborhood assemblies, businesses, universities, and
so on. More recently it has also come to mean the creation of new
formations of the same, often called “counter-institutions.” The
assumption is that prefiguration entails the very “embodiment, within
the ongoing political practice of a movement, of those forms of social
relations, decision-making, culture, and human experience that are the
ultimate goal.” If the “small acts” approach is, as a popular meme puts
it, “being the change you wish to see,” prefiguration is “building the
models you wish to see,” creating the school, business, organization
that you wish to see emulated and proliferated in the world. As
political scientist Carl Boggs, who popularized this usage of the term
in 1977, says of prefiguration:
Only popular institutions in every sphere of daily existence, where
democratic impulses can be most completely realized, can fight off the
repressive incursions of bureaucratic centralism and activate collective
involvement that is the life-force of revolutionary practice. (Carl
Boggs, “Marxism, Prefigurative Communism, and the Problem of Workers’
Control”)
At this meso-level, anarchist society originates in the very doing of
anarchism in, moreover, the very places where individuals form into
community. Macro-level anarchists, with a vigilant eye on class struggle
and total revolution, might accuse this approach of being a “nonviolent,
bourgeois, sanitized anarchism,” but if anarchists want to get anywhere
with skeptical liberals, say, won’t we have to take that risk? I believe
that the “life-force” of anarchism may manifest either in micro-level
personal ethics, meso-level organizational modeling, macro-level
political agitation, or in some combination of these locations. It is
precisely its location in the very “sensuousness” of our continuously
unfolding lived experience, private and communal, that makes anarchism
such a compelling and imperative proposition. Indeed, anarchism is
demonstrably the most adaptive, humane, intelligent, singly inclusive
proposal that we, as social animals, have ever envisioned. It is up to
us literally to show the way.